Noted Studies of Grammar Errors Reveal Changing Issues in Common English Writing

A number of
ambitious studies have worked to map the frequency of such errors in common
use, according to you-can-teach-writing.com.

One famous project,
which was conducted by Maxine Hairston in 1981, surveyed which grammatical
errors professionals found to be most egregious.

Her findings
concluded that status marking errors - as demonstrated in the sentence "I
didn't do nothing" - disturbed respondents the most, along with faulty
parallelism and the use of "would of" instead of "would
have." The responses indicated, moreover, that teachers and business
managers have very different ideas of what essential grammar constitutes, according
to the website.

Another
study, which was completed in 2008 by Andrew and Karen Lunsford, combed through
3,000 collegiate papers. The researchers created a list of frequently made
errors.

Their study
suggested that digital communication may cause "new error patterns." For
instance, bizarrely constructed sentences seem to be made when "students
cut and paste passages from one sentence to another." Incorrect
capitalizations are possibly caused by automated capitalizing tools,
Chronicle.com reports.

Professionals may draw on the error lists offered by these studies as they
revise their written work. They can also utilize grammar and spelling checks to
improve their writing.